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Comparative price levels of alcohol in 37 European countries for 2009
Price levels for alcoholic beverages among the EU Member States vary considerably. In 2009, Alcohol was most expensive in Finland (at 170% of the EU average) and Ireland (167%), whereas Romania, Bulgaria and Spain had the cheapest prices (at 70% of the EU level).
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Table 1 shows the PLIs for four important groups:
food, non-alcoholic beverages, alcoholic beverages and tobacco. These groups represent on average 16%, 2%, 4% and 3% of household expenditure respectively. For reference, the PLIs of total household final consumption expenditure (HFCE) are also presented.
The shaded fields indicate the highest and lowest PLIs per product group among the 27 EU Member States. The highest and lowest PLIs among all 37 participating countries are marked in bold.
At the bottom of the table, variation coefficients are provided for the euro area (EA16), the 15 "old" EU Member States (EU15), the European Union (EU27) and the group of all countries participating in the program (All 37). The variation coefficient is defined as the standard deviation of the PLIs of the respective group of countries as percentage of their average PLI. The higher the variation coefficient, the higher is the price dispersion in the respective product group.
Norway is the most expensive country of all 37 for food, alcoholic beverages and tobacco, whilst Denmark is the most expensive for non-alcoholic beverages.
Amongst the Member States, Denmark represents the most expensive country also for food. Finland has the highest price level of alcoholic beverages in the EU, while Ireland and the United Kingdom are by far the most expensive for tobacco. The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is the least expensive country of all 37 in all four product groups. Montenegro and Serbia have an equally low price level for tobacco. Among the EU countries, the lowest prices are observed in Romania for 2 of these product groups, in Poland for food and Bulgaria for tobacco.
Price dispersion is most pronounced within the 37 country group, including both the high price EFTA countries and the mostly low price Western Balkan Countries. Price dispersion is much less pronounced in the euro area than in the EU as a whole (except for alcoholic beverages). The highest price dispersion is found for tobacco. This is mainly due to large differences in excise taxation on these products across the 37 countries.